Are You Working for Free? Web Analytics

by Christi on April 27, 2011

When you accept a job, one of the first things you want to know is how much you will be paid, right? Why is it then that so many businesses spend so much time and effort working on SEO, blogging and social media and don’t have any idea if their efforts are really paying off. Many businesses have an idea that the efforts are working. They “think” their efforts are paying off, but they really don’t know how many of their visitors are converting to customers because they just aren’t measuring.

Look at your business like a funnel:

There are important things you should measure, and the funnel will help you envision them. And the best part is it isn’t hard to get this information!

Website visitors – These are the people in the top of your funnel. They are the people you have attracted through SEO, blogging and social media.

Leads – These are the people that have taken the next step in showing interest in your product or service. These are your potential customers. Maybe they filled out a form or requested a demo or other information. You know more information about these people than you do your website visitors. These people have converted from visitors to leads.

Customers – These are the people that actually pay you money! These people started out as visitors and then converted to leads and now they are your customers.

When you look at the funnel, do you see places where you can improve? Maybe you are getting enough visitors, but you don’t convert them to leads. Try adding different calls to action or offers to drive them to move a little further in your funnel and become leads.

Maybe, you are getting plenty of people converting to leads, but you just can’t seem to close the deal and convert them into customers. Create more lead nurturing campaigns that show your leads more of the benefits of your products or services to help convert them from leads to customers.

Some businesses, such as real estate, have a really long sales cycle, so it takes them a lot longer to move people through the funnel. Think about your typical sales cycle. Look at your web analytics and measure your visitors movement through your own funnel. By measuring you can see where you need to improve your efforts.

Also think about the sources for visitors and how they influence conversion. Do people who you get in your sales funnel from Facebook convert faster than the people you get from your blog? Does your blog help people from Facebook come to your site and convert? Looking at the sources of your traffic and their behaviors can also help you discover areas that you can more effectively utilize in moving people through your funnel to becoming customers.

Don’t work for free. Know for certain how your efforts are paying off!

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